Starting in early January, check a newsstand near you to find the February 2011 issue of Birder’s World magazine. Inside, you’ll find a feature article on Burrowing Owl behavior and conservation, written by me and featuring photographs by me and my friend Mac Stone. I was excited enough about the article – my first feature [...]

I got some exciting news late last week: the blog post I submitted to the NESCent evolution blogging competition, “Do mother birds play God?” was selected as one of two winners! There was some stiff competition, and I’m quite honored that the judges chose my blog among all the great entries (you can see them [...]

Imagine that you’re considering having children. Upon visiting a genetic counselor, you discover that you and your partner both carry the same rare, recessive genetic mutation. While neither you nor your partner shows any symptoms, there is a 25% chance that your child will suffer from a debilitating genetic disorder. Then imagine that the counselor [...]

A couple of months ago, I posted an interview with Suzanne Rutishauser, part of the Untamed Science team. Untamed Science is a group of biologists and filmmakers who produce great educational science films. Well, Rob Nelson, co-founder of Untamed Science, liked our “Video Blog” project from the Science Filmmaking course enough that he’s featuring it [...]

I recently wrote about the excellent Scientific Filmmaking workshop I took at Bodega Bay last month, and I shared a few of the exercises I had done during the workshop. Well, after submitting a big grant last week, I had time to sit down and put a few finishing touches on the final “video blog” project [...]

First things first: if you have never watched the 1988 documentary “Cane Toads: An Unnatural History” by Mark Lewis, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy as soon as possible. You can thank me later. If you have seen “Cane Toads,” then you know all about the warty, highly toxic, yet strangely endearing [...]

It’s DDIG season. That means that I, along with most other Ph.D. candidates in my field, have spent the last several weeks working on an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (or DDIG). A lot of the graduate school experience (in the sciences, at least) is applying for small grants to support your research. The DDIG [...]

Imagine you’re a biologist. Nothing in your formal training has prepared you to communicate with the public about your work… that just isn’t part of a scientific education these days. So, what if you want people outside the scientific community to understand what you do? Should you tell them to read the papers you’ve published [...]

After the ISBE meeting in Perth, my buddy Nate Dappen and I rented an SUV and headed south. We had only four days to spend in Southwest Australia, so we made ourselves a ridiculously full itinerary. One night at the Dryandra Woodland, one night at Stirling Range National Park, one night at Cheynes Beach, and [...]

About this time last year, I was preparing an application for the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) College Scholarship. Through this program, about a dozen young photographers in college or graduate school get to attend NANPA’s annual Nature Photography Summit. I had the honor of being selected to receive one of the scholarships in [...]